Classic Keys, Vital Organs

James Carter performed Tuesday at the Blue Note, where his trio is playing through the weekend.
Alan Nahigian

By

Will Friedwald

Updated April 29, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

James Carter Organ Trio

The Blue Note131 W. 3rd Street, (212) 475-8592 Through Sunday

If I were assembling an all-star touring band called "The Monsters of Jazz," the first guy I'd call would be James Carter: At 42, the saxophonist has chops, technique, concepts and energy enough to justify several definitions of the term "monstrous." Working at the Blue Note this week with his Organ Trio—co-starring Gerald Gibbs on Hammond B-3 and drummer Leonard King—Mr. Carter seems to be continually playing everything that can be played, and all of it at the same time. Still, as Tuesday's late show demonstrated, the trio gets even better with the addition of several special guests. Trumpeter Nicholas Payton underscored Mr. Carter's eloquence on "Stablemates," and space-age blues guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, surprised me by urging Mr. Carter toward his most romantic moment on the classic bop ballad "'Round Midnight."

Sheer technique shouldn't be an end unto itself, and yet, judiciously balanced with content, both intellectual and emotionally, it's nothing to ignore. From the time of Sidney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton onward, there's always been a place in jazz for players with virtuosic technique. The same is true of the blues: There's a long tradition of super-endowed R&B sax masters who were equal parts swordsmen and soloists, trying to play faster, louder, higher and more daringly than the others. There's even a high-technique side of avant-garde music—free jazz vanquished bebop's obsession with ever-more complex harmonies, but some of the more amazing musicians of the 1960s were able to do things, with the saxophone in particular, that the makers of the instrument could never have imagined: false fingerings, upper registers that weren't even on the horn itself, notes in between notes.

James Carter brings together all these traditions and a lot more, bridging the gaps between pioneering saxophone tricksters like Rudy Wiedoeft, the vaudeville saxophone star of the 1920s, and contemporary sax masters like David Murray. Mr. Carter plays dazzling runs in all directions, darts out notes and mulitphonic tones like you can't imagine, and coaxes noises out of his instrument that, in a blindfold test, you wouldn't have guessed could come from a saxophone.

On his new album, "Caribbean Rhapsody," Mr. Carter, like Wiedoeft did, illustrates how jazz and classical virtuosity are closely related. His set consists of two extended works by the Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra—"Caribbean Rhapsody," which features Mr. Carter and his cousin, the acclaimed jazz violinist Regina Carter, as soloists, with the Akua Dixon String Quartet—as well as "Concerto for Saxophones and Orchestra," a full-scale symphonic work. Interacting with the strings here, Mr. Carter plays with a very a different tone than the one he employs at the Blue Note—no less forceful, but proving he is an amazingly distinctive player even without his customary distortions.

Whether working with a full symphonic contingent or playing solo (as he does in a pair of unaccompanied pieces on the album), or with a trio or a quintet at the Blue Note, Mr. Carter makes music so amazing that you think to yourself that it must be what the Rapture will sound like.

Lyrics & Lyricists

92nd Street Y1395 Lexington Ave., (212) 415-5500 Saturday-Monday

Producer Deborah Winer has devised an all-encompassing concept for the final Lyrics & Lyricists show of the season, "The Crowds at El Morocco: The Heyday of the New York Nightclubs." She can present virtually any song by any composer that might have been heard in a New York club before, say, 1960. The cast comprises talented "hyphenated" vocalists, such as pianist-singer Billy Stritch, actor-singer James Naughton, dancer-singer Karen Ziemba, pop star-singer Debby Boone, and singer-singer La Tanya Hall, but the main attraction is Julie Wilson, the 86-year-old veteran headliner of the great New York club years. Ms. Wilson will be given a lifetime achievement award, but, more important, she'll presumably be given at least a few opportunities to demonstrate why she's a living legend. It's thanks to artists like Ms. Wilson that these songs have made it from Broadway shows to smoke-filled clubs and now to the concert stage.

The Music of Bud Powell & Earl Hines

The outstanding contemporary pianist and longtime JaLC favorite Marcus Roberts celebrates the legacies of two of the all-time keyboard giants named Earl: Earl "Fatha" Hines and Earl "Bud" Powell. The former helped move piano out of ragtime and into jazz in the 1920s, while the latter showed clearly where bebop piano would go in the 1940s. The prospect of hearing Mr. Roberts's keyboard interpretations of such Earl essentials as "Rosetta" and "Dance of the Infidels" is enticing enough, but what makes this show especially promising is a set of new arrangements for nine-piece band for these jazz standards, which are usually only heard as piano pieces. The lineup includes trumpeters Marcus Printup and Alphonso Horne, trombonist Ron Westray, saxophonists Ted Nash, Stephen Riley, and Ricardo Pascal, plus bassist Rodney Jordan, and drummer Jason Marsalis.

ENLARGE

Marlene VerPlanck's latest album is 'Once There Was a Moon.'
Alan Nahigian

Marlene VerPlanck

The Kitano66 Park Ave., (212) 885-7000 Wednesday

Marlene VerPlanck has spent much of her career singing in the studios: How many vocalists have backed up both Frank Sinatra (most famously on "Trilogy") and Kiss? It's all the more impressive that she's also created an ongoing discography and that she sings frequently in local clubs. Ms. VerPlanck has the kind of sweet, strong voice and straight-ahead approach that records well, and sounds just right on a wide range of excellent songs that are slightly to the left of the really well-known standards. Her latest album (number 21), "Once There Was a Moon," is filled with obscure gems to delight a songhound's heart, like Johnny Mercer's rarely heard lyric to the Miles Davis classic "Moon Dreams," and a lovely new text for Bill Evans's "In April." She also consistently corals the best musicians in the city, like pianist Tedd Firth and drummer Sherrie Maricle's trio.

Steve Kuhn Trio with Eddie Gomez & Joey Baron

Birdland315 W. 44th St., (212) 581-3080 Through Saturday

I have heard Steve Kuhn play more abstractly, and I have heard him play more aggressively, but I've rarely heard a set by a piano trio more beautiful than the one Mr. Kuhn played on Wednesday night. During the performance, he announced that "In a Sentimental Mood" would be his one ballad of the evening, but everything he (along with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Joey Baron) played had a rhapsodic feel to it, particularly an artful collage of "The Very Thought of You," delivered as a Tatum-esque solo, and "Like Someone in Love." Mr. Gomez supplied a chamber-music-style "Love Letter to My Father," in which his bass became a classical violin, and the set climaxed with two very complex originals by Mr. Kuhn, "Trance" and "Oceans in the Sky." Through it all, the three of them, and the rest of us, spent 75 very agreeable minutes in a sentimental mood.

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